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Thursday, May 6, 2010

I talked with my dad on the phone
for 30 minutes last night. 30 minutes. Probably not a big deal to most, but to
me, this was something of an anomaly. My dad isn’t much of a talker. Growing
up, the vast majority of our conversations began and ended with school, grades,
and standardized tests. This has been a trusty recipe for 30-second
conversations, especially since I’ve always managed to keep my academics more
or less in order. As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve learned to pick up on my
dad’s preferred mode of communication—his actions and his hard work. His “I
love you” is an 80-hour work week and his “good job” is a split-second smile
and a nod—you might miss it if you haven’t learned to pay close attention.

When my dad learned that I wanted
to attend Duke for my undergraduate education, he told me that the price tag
for tuition could only be justified if I were to aim for medical school.
Otherwise, it simply “wasn’t worth it.” I knew that I really wanted to go to
Duke but I also knew very little about becoming a doctor. In the end, I agreed
to give the pre-med route a shot and that was my first decision to pursue
medicine. I know, not much of a decision.

Despite a general lack of interest
in most of what I was learning, I ended up doing pretty well in all my pre-med
classes. This didn’t give my dad much to talk about and it was a good thing,
sort of. However, I’ve learned that passion-less work will eventually catch up
with you in some shape or form. For me, it was burnout. By the time I had
finished my junior year at Duke and was gearing up to take my MCAT, I was
wiped. I was sick of the soul-draining cycle of stuffing information that I
didn’t care about into my head so that I could brain-puke it onto a test, so
that I could get the grade I wanted, so that I could go to my grad school of
choice, so that 20 years from now, I could perhaps be in a position I wanted to
be in. It was all too results-oriented. I realized that I couldn’t embrace the
journey because my initial decision to pursue medicine was rather uninspired. I
was good at the classes, I liked the idea of helping people, but it felt like I
was travelling smoothly, aimlessly down this default path, waiting for
lightning to strike.

And then I chose to pursue my
medical education at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, at which point my dad
basically told me to fuck off. This was after I spent a year working in an ER,
and deciding that I really did want to do medicine after all.
I think it really forced me to own up to this decision, the fact that my dad
hated it—not my decision to go into medicine, but my decision to attend Keck. I
was lucky to have garnered a few acceptance letters, and my dad felt that at
best, Keck should’ve been my third-choice option. Simply put, he had looked at
the U.S. News rankings, and to him it was rather clear. He didn't talk to me
for a month. In his eyes, it was love unreciprocated. He had done his duty,
working tirelessly so that I would have every opportunity. And now, he felt I
was abandoning my end of the bargain, foregoing his love. I have since gained a
better appreciation of the cultural overtones that led to my dad's actions and
from this I have found forgiveness. But at the time, I couldn't see much beyond
the pain and bitterness. There were nights I went to bed with murderous
thoughts.

It’s a funny thing when you choose
an unpopular stance on anything. You feel added pressure to perform, to
succeed, to avoid ever having to hear “I told you so.” And this is how I
embarked on my education at Keck. For the first many months, I wavered between
an inextinguishable fear that I had made a mistake and an unrivaled
determination to make the most of my experience. As the year went on, however,
these raw emotions began to dissolve into peace as I found myself enjoying my
experience at Keck. And not surprisingly, with this enjoyment came relief. It’s
been a transition, a challenge, a fulfillment. But more than anything, it’s
been the first time in a long time that I’ve enjoyed the process—the
journey independent of the destination.

So I talked to my dad last night
and per usual, we talked about school. He had heard from my mom that I was
enjoying medical school, and he expressed his pleasure. “You know,” he
chuckled, “it’s sort of a relief because I feel like I’m essentially the one
who forced you into medicine.”

He hummed to himself in muffled
agreement. Then after another brief chuckle, he brought up my White Coat
Ceremony, which he had attended at the beginning of the school year. “You
remember that—oh, what’s it called—that oath-thing you took?” He was referring
to the Hippocratic Oath. “I remember being moved.” He took a breath and his
tone deepened. “So, it looks like you are learning quite a bit, huh? I couldn’t
be more proud of you.”

I paused to let this translate. In
all the years I’ve known him, my dad has only said “I’m proud of you” one other
time. Like I said, my dad isn’t a man of many words and tough love is the only
kind he knows. But I’ve learned to read between the lines. Here he was, a year
after intensely fighting my decision to attend Keck, stating explicitly that he
was not only okay with it, he was proud.

I thought back to the Hippocratic
Oath my dad mentioned. I remember standing in front of the school my dad never
wanted me to attend and pledging a certain loyalty to “the profession of
Medicine and… its members” and accepting a certain responsibility “for the good
of the sick.” Now looking back, I think the Hippocratic Oath sums up pretty
well the fact that our decisions are steeped in the influence of
others—friends, teachers, patients, and parents. Our free will is inextricably
knotted to both those that come before us and to those that come after. But
even as we acknowledge the ways in which our characters and choices have been
molded by those around us, we somehow take ownership of our individual paths.
The day I stood up at my White Coat Ceremony and recited that oath was perhaps
the baptism marking when my journey in medicine—one that began with a little
coercion from my dad—fully became my own. And with a simple, rare “I’m proud of
you,” I felt my dad acknowledge this fact as well.